Harry Turtledove - The Gladiator

Cautiously, Gianlranco nodded. Even more cautiously, he said, "I guess so."

"All right, then." Iacopo/Iacomo went on sounding reasonable. Gianfranco supposed that was better than having him sound ferocious. It still wasn't good. When Gianfranco still didn't say anything, the officer gestured impatiently. "Well? Which one was it?"

"That one." Gianfranco pointed to the wall where Giulio had had his little room, the one from which he'd summoned the transposition chamber. Gianfranco didn't see a door on that wall now, any more than he saw any sign of the trap door that led down to the subbasement. Maybe that meant…

"You heard him. Get to work," lacopo or lacomo told the other men from the Security Police.

They did. They started banging on the wall, not just with their fists but with hammers and wrenches, too. After a little while, one of them stopped. "Well, I'll be-!" one of them said. If he would be what he said he would be, he would spend a very long time in a very warm place. "Fry me for a chicken if something's not hollow back there."

Gianfranco had hoped the Security Police would find the hidden office. He also hoped the people from the home timeline hadn't left behind anything that would hurt them. They'd had to get out in a hurry, as he knew too well.

Iaeopo/lacomo seemed to be a fellow with simple, direct ideas. "Knock down the wall," he said. "We'll find out what's in back of it."

The men from the Security Police rolled up their sleeves and got to work with sledgehammers. The racket made Gianfranco stick his fingers in his ears. It also made somebody from upstairs come running down. "What are you guys doing?" he yelled. "People think it's an earthquake."

"Tell them it's plumbers. Tell them anything you want," la-copo/Iacomo said. "We found a secret passage. I didn't think we would, but we did. The kid here wasn't blowing smoke after all." Gianfranco should have been insulted. He was insulted, but not enough to say anything about it. The Security Police officer from upstairs went away. The others kept banging at the wall.

Try as they would, the Security Police had a devil of a time knocking it down. They swore and complained. Then one of them smashed enough concrete to bang his sledgehammer off a steel bar. He swore again, this time in disgust. "It's reinforced concrete!" he yelled. "What's hiding back there?"

They needed cutting torches to get in. They were all fit to be tied by the lime one of them squeezed through the opening and shone a flashlight into the room. "Well?" another one called.

"Well, what?" the man inside said. "Some of the ugliest furniture I've ever seen, that's all."

"Go on in, kid," Iacopo/lacomo told Gianfranco. "Is this where you were?"

"I guess so," Gianfranco said once he scrambled through the hole in the wall. The furniture-most of it gaudy plastic- must have come from the home timeline. Scorched metal filing cabinets stood against the far wall. The air stank of stale smoke. Another man from the Security Police opened a drawer. He looked inside, then muttered and closed it again.

"What's the matter?" somebody asked him.

"Papers are nothing but ashes. Whatever was in there, they got rid of it," he answered.

"Where did they take you next, Mazzilli?" Iacopo or Ia-como asked.

"I don't know," he said. "This is where they put the blindfold on me."

The Security Police officer coughed, then nodded. "Oh, yeah. You did say that." Now he seemed more ready to believe the things Gianfranco had said, even when they weren't true. That was pretty crazy, but Gianfranco didn't complain. Oh, no. The officer lit a cigarette. With the air already smoky, Gianfranco wondered why he bothered.

"So there's a different passage somewhere on one of these other walls?" another officer asked.

"I guess so. How else could they have got me out of here?" Gianfranco said. He knew the answer to that, but the Security Police didn't. And he didn't think they would ever figure it out.

A new school year. New classes, new teachers. Annarita knew she'd feel crazy for the first couple of weeks while she got used to things. Not needing to worry about the Young Socialists' League was kind of a relief. Normally, she would have thought hard about running for president her senior year. But, after she'd proved wrong about The Gladiator, she was sure Maria Tenace would clobber her if she tried. And so, with a small mental sigh, she decided to sit on the sidelines and let Maria have it.

She decided that, anyway, till people started coming over to her and asking her if she'd run. They all seemed horrified when she said no. "You're going to let Maria just take it?" one girl said. "But she'll make everybody hate her and she'll run the League into the ground."

"I don't want to have a big fight with her," Annarita said. "Life is too short."

"Who says you'd need a fight?" the girl answered. "Nobody can stand her, and 1 mean nobody." She wasn't any special friend-Annarita hardly knew her. That made Annarita wonder if she ought to change her mind. When three more people told her the same thing, she did change it. She put in her petition of candidacy about an hour before the deadline.

Maria Tenace stormed up to her the next day, literally shaking with fury. "So you think you can get away with it, do you?" Maria shouted, as if the two of them were alone instead of in a crowded hallway. "Well, you'll find out!"

She did have some friends. They started spreading stories about Annarita. Of course they'd heard about Gianf ranco's kidnapping over the holiday. They tried to blame it on her. She wondered what she could say. Simplest seemed best: "We took in a cousin who was down on his luck. He did something he shouldn't have. I wish he didn't, but is it my fault he did?"

Would that do any good? She didn't know. All she could do was hope. She wasn't very worried either way. If she won, she won. If she didn't, she would have fewer things to worry about the rest of her senior year.

The election meeting was the most crowded one she'd ever seen. She and Maria flipped a coin to see who'd speak in which order. Annarita won, and chose to go last. Maria launched straight into an attack: "Comrade students, your choice today is simple. It is a battle between the forces of reaction and those of progress. If you want to shamelessly excuse backsliding anti-Socialist thought, you will vote for my opponent. She showed her true colors last year, when she refused to condemn The Gladiator, that hotbed of capitalist propaganda. If you would rather have a true Socialist in charge of the Young Socialists' League, you will choose me instead. I hope you do. Grazie."

Annarita got up. "I don't think I'm a reactionary," she said. "I just don't like getting people in trouble before I'm sure they need to be there. Maybe I was wrong about The Gladiator." But I'll never believe I was. "At least I know 1 can be wrong, though. I don't think Maria's ever been wrong in her life-and if you don't believe me, just ask her."

Maria Tenace started to nod. She almost gave herself a whiplash stopping when she realized, a split second too late, that Annarita wasn't complimenting her. Everybody saw. If looks could kill, hers would have knocked Annarita over on the spot.

No secret ballot-the vote was by a show of hands. Annarita thought that would doom her. Who wanted to risk being labeled a reactionary? To her amazement, she won by something close to two to one.

After the election, a boy whose name she didn't even know told her, "I don't want somebody turning me in to the Security Police if I say something she doesn't like. I don't think you'd do that."

"I hope not!" Annarita exclaimed. Somebody slammed the door to the hall where the League was meeting. Several people said it was Maria storming away. Annarita went on, "I wouldn't have walked out if I lost, either."